No Twitch Streaming for Wii U Because Watching People Play Isn't Fun

This past week, Nintendo has been providing great coverage on its upcoming games from E3 with its Treehouse E3 livestreams as well as the successful Super Smash Bros. Wii U tournament that took place in Los Angeles. It seemed that Nintendo has finally embraced online streaming for gaming until Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime, in an interview with Polygon, explained why Twitch streaming isn't baked into Wii U.

Whether Wii U has the capability to even stream out of the box is another question, but Fils-Aime doesn't cite any technological barriers. Instead, he notes that the house of Mario looks to bring fun in all forms and quite simply they don't think watching a random person stream games is fun.

"Your specific question of just purely streaming gameplay, what we've got to think through is, so what's fun about that? From a consumer standpoint, what's fun about it?"

Mario Kart 8, with its Mario Kart TV feature, allows users to upload highlights of a race instead of the whole session to YouTube, something that Nintendo believes offers fun with its focused content.

"Kart is fun because its a highlight of the race," Fils-Aime said. "You can make some choices as to what parts are going to be shared. We think that makes it interesting, and obviously the meme of the Luigi death stare is wonderful when that comes out of that type of experience. But in the end we've got to make sure that it's fun."

He also explains that watching Twitch streams should be used to discover tips and strategies, something that the Super Smash Bros. tourney provided.

"So for us, what we're doing at the Nokia theater with the Smash Invitational, we loved that streamed because that's where you are able to see how these players perform, the moves they make, you can learn something," said Fils-Aime. "That has value to us. And you can expect us to do more of that type of activity, highlighting our games and providing a forum for players to learn how to play better.

"But that's different than watching Joe Blow's 30 minute stream, which may or may not have something that's all that interesting," he adds.

It's a different approach compared to Sony and Microsoft who have introduced Twitch streaming with the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

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